The Takeaway: Positive signs emerge from 19-inning loss

“It has been an unusually fatiguing day.” —Ulysses

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By
Tim Britton
Posted Aug. 10, 2014 @ 3:44 am

“It has been an unusually fatiguing day.” —Ulysses

“It just seemed like it was never going to end.” —Heath Hembree

ANAHEIM — The Red Sox lost a game on Saturday night — or really Sunday morning — and frankly, I don’t want to say too much about it. It lasted a very long time, and if I felt like it, I could ramble here for a few thousand words.

I do not feel like it.

Albert Pujols’ 19th-inning home run off Brandon Workman gave the Angels a 5-4 win after six hours and 31 minutes — and even a little longer if you count the 90-second review to determine if Pujols’ ball had indeed gone out. Workman’s struggles with the long ball and his first inning of work were hammered home here, and it seems wrong to criticize the guy who threw 96 pitches 48 hours earlier for not bringing his A-game.

Junichi Tazawa’s inability to close also seems like hanging fruit. It was his fourth outing in five days, and manager John Farrell clearly wanted to stay away from the righty if possible.

So here’s what really mattered in a game that even Farrell said “can feel like two losses.”

1. While this was still a normal game, Clay Buchholz had his best outing of the season (arguably).

Farrell called it Buchholz’s best, and the pitcher ranked it in his top two, with Houston almost certainly the other one in the mix.

Everyone knows what’s been bad about Buchholz’s season. His inability to command any of his secondary offerings with consistency has ruined what can be the game’s most eclectic and dizzying pitch mix. That’s left Buchholz becoming more predictable, and his less-than-ideal stuff has been hit harder than ever before.

The whys behind the what have been harder to discern and have left Buchholz dealing with what he’s called a “baffling” season.

On Saturday night, though, Buchholz possessed his most complete mix of the season. He commanded his fastball, he showcased the kind of changeup that had been lacking earlier in the season and he relied time and again on his best curveball of the year. Out of his season-high 120 pitches over eight innings, Buchholz threw that curve 32 times — the most he’d ever thrown it in a major-league game.

“That sort of felt like last year did,” he said. “Just in any count, if I fell behind 2-0, I could throw a curveball for a strike and get back in the count. It gives the hitter something else to think about. I can even throw another curveball next pitch or a heater or a changeup. That’s pitching.

“It makes you realize even more how hard it is to go out there with two pitches, especially against the lineup they throw out there every day.”

Buchholz’s outing would have looked even better had Mike Trout not ruined it, as is his wont. Trout’s game-tying homer in the eighth came on a fastball down and away. Four hours after he allowed it, Buchholz didn’t regret the location.

“That’s why he is who he is. I felt like it was a pretty good pitch,” he said. “If I’d have known we were going to play 19 innings, I promise you I wouldn’t have given up a home run to Trout. I’d have walked him.”

2. Christian Vazquez caught 18-plus innings and 272 pitches.

And he saved runs with a few sparkling defensive gems, including pouncing on a chopper in the seventh for the final out and snaring a high fastball to prevent a wild pitch with a runner on third in the 14th (I think).

“Vazqui, I can’t say enough about that guy,” said Buchholz. “Catching every inning tonight like he did, saving runs multiple times, the kid’s a good catcher right now and I think he’s got a chance to be really really good.”

3. Heath Hembree pitched the game of his life in his Red Sox debut.

Hembree hasn’t been a starter since his sophomore year in college, so that’s the last time he went four innings or threw 60-something pitches in a baseball game. On Saturday night, the 25-year-old reliever — acquired from San Francisco in the Jake Peavy deal — tossed four scoreless, capped by a strikeout of Mike Trout on his 62nd pitch.

He had escaped trouble in the 17th, when consecutive intentional walks loaded the bases with one out. He got a shallow fly ball and a groundout to get through it, then came back on for the 18th for good measure.

“He was outstanding,” Farrell said. “Swing-and-miss with his fastball, didn’t fear the strike zone. A very positive first outing.”

“Honestly, I was getting a little tired,” he said. “I was just trying to give everything I had and just empty the tank. I was just out there pitching.”

His reward? A trip back to Pawtucket. “Deserve ain’t got nothin’ to do with it,” as Snoop said on The Wire. No word yet on which pitcher had the foresight to fly west in the 10th inning to take his place.

4. Xander Bogaerts made the right play in the 14th inning.

The scene: Anaheim had the bases loaded, nobody out and Trout up down a run. The Red Sox opted to play at double-play depth up the middle, conceding the tying run in order to go for two outs. Trout hit a grounder to Bogaerts, who tossed it to Pedroia for the first out. Pedroia then came home with the ball late instead of going to first, feeling he had a better shot of getting the catcher Chris Iannetta at home than the speedy Trout at first.

Many thought Bogaerts should have come home with the ball to cut down the tying run. That’s asking a lot of a 21-year-old shortstop when he’s playing back for two.